A Review of "Hostages to Fortune" by Arthur Nicholson, 2005

This is a good book on an old topic, the sinking of a British battleship and battlecruiser off Malaya on the 10th of December 1941. There have been many books written on this one topic, and it is covered in detail in many general books on the war in the Pacific. This book continues the tradition of adding new information and drawing new conclusions, based on new research or adding new interpretation of old research and old documents.

The basic story continues to fascinate. In late 1941 the British decided to send two battleship-class ships to Singapore as a deterrent to the Japanese threat to British and Dutch colonies in the Far East. The two ships sent were the modern battleship Prince of Wales and the older battlecruiser Repulse. Together they operated as Force Z. Both ships were sunk in the first few days of the war, an outcome several senior politicians and military leaders in Britain were worried might happen. Although that they would be sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers operating from Indo-China was not foreseen, except by the two British Admirals commanding in the Mediterranean who had often experienced the dangers of air attacks on surface ships.

After the war British leaders, especially Churchill, avoided taking responsibility. Who was responsible is one of the ongoing questions. Another question is whether loss of the ships could have been avoided, even after the they arrived in Singapore.

A Review of “The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions”, by Alan Zimm. 2011

A bad idea and terrible planning from beginning to end.

This book uses modern operations research techniques to analyze the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at the levels of strategy, operations and tactics. In the process the reader learns the difference between deterministic and stochastic models of the results of hits by bombs, torpedoes and shells on warships. The author provides many useful tables showing facts like torpedo hit probabilities and ship damage possibilities under different attack scenarios. These tables are based on pre and post-war US and Japanese war college studies or on results of other naval battles during World War II. There are many good maps and many good photographs.

The conclusion of the author is that the Pearl Harbor attack was poorly planned and executed at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. At an operational level the plan worked, but only by chance. The Japanese carriers reached their launch point north of Oahu without being detected, and their first attack wave achieved surprise. But this operational success resulted from luck and poor American reconnaissance. Toward the end of the book the author points out that any reasonable American precautions such as dawn fighter patrols off Oahu, or a properly manned control room able to react to the radar contact with the incoming Japanese strike would have led to a massacre of the Japanese aircraft.